世界史纲读后感.doc

世界史纲读后感

An essay on European culture

The Outline of the History

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[Abstract] After reading the book The Outline of the History written by Wells, I have learnt the general history of the world. The author’s point of that the world could be only saved by education rather than wars impressed me deeply. This article mainly talks about my comments about the importance of education to a country and the unity of thought to a nation.

[Key words] history, unify, education.

Ⅰ. Introduction to the author
H. G. Wells (1866—1946) was a famous English novelist, especially well-known throughout the world as a writer of science fiction. He is one of the most prolific writers in modern time, whose works involves almost every field including science, literature, history, society and politics. His famous works are The Time Machine (1895), The Invisible Man（1897），The War of the World (1898) ,The First Man in the Moon (1901), etc.

Ⅱ. Introduction to the book
The book was published in 1920. It is mean to be read straightforwardly for ordinary people to understand that it is inevitable that political, social and economic organization would develop into worldwide alliance if expecting civilization to last. And one of the topics is to illustrate that the world could be saved only through education rather than war and revolution.
It is a concise edition for all the history enthusiasts with extremely wide field of vision and a light touch to show the readers biological and human history from the beginning of life in an orderly way.
There is no doubt that it is a popular historical book with special attraction and value. It is not so serious and scholarly like other outstanding historical works. What’s more, it’s earlier than any other work in that era to get rid of nationalism and the Eurocentric prejudice. The book is concerned with human cultural heritage, including ideology, culture, religion which is of great value in the history of human civilization. The book discusses from the earth formation, biological and human origins until the First World War, across the five continents of the world history. The book with 105 maps and 100 illustrations lives up to its name as a classic masterpiece.

Ⅲ. Comments
In the early twentieth century when the author Wells wrote the book, the mankind entered into the historical period of the global war. People were so sad and tired that they had no energy to go into the bewildering future and fate, generally feeling the world in chaos and unrest. Wells reflected on the circumstances above, and then wrote the book The Outline of History.
Although what Wells mainly described is a history of mankind, the first few chapters of the book showed us about the universe and the evolution history of the earth. Since it requires enough knowledge we can find out that Wells is really knowledgeable. In that period the author had live, a series of new research such as radioactivity, radio telescope was only in its infancy, and the question about the universe and the age of the earth was just in its beginning stages, while these have already been incorporated into the book by Wells in early 1918. The whole book is concerned with the cultural heritage of mankind, including the ideological, cultural, religious and other heritage which is the most valuable in human civilization.
When it comes to Chinese civilization, the author talks about enormous influences of that Qin Shihuang unified China. In the finally analysis, it is the unity of thought that made China become a united nation in real sense. Even after the death of Qin Shihuang, Qin Dynasty disintegrated, what the later conquerors considered is no longer the unity of a certain region. Instead, it is the reunification of the whole nation. There is no doubt that it took a decisive influence on Chinese historical development. The author seemly intended to take comparison between the unification of China by Qin Shihuang and the Greek city-state system. Although every city-state enjoyed a high degree of autonomy that laid the foundation for the later development of democracy, too much emphasis on its independence resulted in not forming a unified country all along. When the foreign enemy invaded, it was difficult to form an effective resistance. In relation to the Confucius Confucianism, the author Wells also carried on a dialectical thinking. The advantage of the Confucianism is to bring society common values, and it won’t lead to serious social contradiction because of the different ideological value. But the system of Confucianism has his great defect. That is the lack of positive and enterprising values. The core idea is harmony and to pacify the world is the highest ideal of scholar-officials in imperial times. Harmony and to pacify the world is considered as a starting point. As long as it is harmonious, we can say the society has reached the best state. This idea has its great limitations. If ignoring the contact with the outside world and only paying attention to the local social peace, of course, it can realize. But the problem is that with other countries rising abruptly and developing in succession, it is inevitable to have the fierce collision with them. And at that time whether can we get a space for one person in civilized communication?
Of course we can't attribute all the factors that hindering social development to Confucian thought. The whole system of society may account for the greater effects. When the rulers took Confucianism as the highest standards, problems appeared. It was took advantage of by rulers and became a tool to enslave the public. Only every man’s thoughts and actions are in light of the highest standards, can they be determined correct or not. Thus, public ideas greatly controlled by Confucianism and rulers. When people's thoughts and behaviors contradict the value orientation of society, at first he should be on the recognition of that social value is absolutely correct. What we should do is to adjust our own points of view, rather than to ask whether social sense is correct.
When telling the story of Rome Empire in the flourishing period, one of the reasons why society has not developed is based on such judgment. The Romans thought was generally depressed, they have many different answers to the problem that what we must do in order to save ourselves. And even some people turn to God and the afterlife which does not exist. This belief in afterlife is an effective anesthetic to deal with current suffering, but in fact the reality is still in dark. From this we can see that the Empire of Rome is so similar to the Chinese feudal times.
In addition, according to the author Wells, a country's prosperity and decline largely depend on the status of democracy construction, the degree of education development and the science and the lever of technology development. This point is reflected in the analysis of Rome Empire. Wells approved the achievements of Rome Empire in the aspect of democracy. He thought Rome Empire as the first modern autonomous state. But because of the social status and backward science and technology, the so-called democracy had not been firmly implemented. Everyone to enjoy the right was only on paper. And the newspaper represented the popular will had not appeared yet at that time. People's consciousness about participating in the deliberation and administration of state affairs was not strong. It caused the result that democratic politic was easily controlled by the minority and returned to a totalitarian state. Visible in Wells’ view, the importance of the newspaper in a democratic country is self-evident.
To a certain extent, the state of education determines the future national situation. The city of Alexander in Egypt once shone the brilliant light of science. Ptolemy established the first university of the world in the city of Alexander, and also set up a big library in which there were almost all the books. However brilliant light had lasted only about one hundred years. The reason was just that it didn’t receive an effective spread, people could not get a good education and rulers also did not want to see his people cleverer day by day. China in the feudal period also reflected the same weakness. As we know, Chinese education is on the establishment of the obscure writings in classical Chinese. If people want to access to knowledge, they have no choice but to cultivate the solid basic skills of writing in classical Chinese. It was these obstacles that made the mass of the people in isolation with knowledge
Above all, the author proved his point that all of us should know. That is, the world could only be saved by education rather than wars.

Ⅳ.Conclusion
The author Wells gives the later generations a lesson about education and unification .We should take history as a mirror just as the old saying goes to make our nation rich, strong and prosperous.

Reference
1.世界史纲 韦尔斯著；蔡慕晖、蔡希陶译 上海：上海三联书社